Social Security Measure To Provide For Old Age Signed
by Pres. Roosevelt

Operative Jan. 1, 1937

Bill Will Tax Employers Employes Three Per Cent on Wage Up to $3,000

WASHINGTON- (AP)- President Roosevelt called his aides around him today for
a little ceremony enacting into future law what he considers one of the more
important measures passed during his administration- the social security legislation.

The stroke of the pen attaching the President's signature to the bill was the
last formality needed to put into law a measure calling for a new and far-reaching
social experiment and largest tax program ever approved by Congress.

Indications were that the President would announce quickly the make-up of the
social security board which will administer the new law providing for old age
pensions and unemployment insurance systems.

Under the bill employers and employes eventually will be taxed three per cent
each on wages up to $3000 annually to provide for contributing old age pensions.

Benefits range from $10 to $85? a month. The plan becomes operative Jan. 1,
1937, but no pensions will be paid until Jan. 1, 1942.

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New Deal: the Security Act of`1935. The act created the United States' first national old age insurance system. Beginning in 1937, taxes were paid by employers and employees into a fund that would be used to assist workers upon retirement. The first payments were to begin in 1941 but this was later moved up to 1940. The act also included provisions that created a national system of unemployment compensation and that gave federal grants to states for categorical welfare programs (for example aid to single mothers, the blind and the elderly). Politically, the social security act if often credited with helping make the Democratic Party the majority party for a generation.